HE ‘BURBS – The Pacers wrapped up the first week of training camp with the blue team smacking the white team in the mouth 32-15 during a 12-minute scrimmage at Conseco Fieldhouse on Saturday afternoon.

Hibbert made up for a slow start to camp by being active on both ends of the court.

“That was a real butt kicking,” Jim O’Brien said. “It’s not like the white team were all rookies. That wasn’t the case, they had some veterans and the blue team just wore them out.”

Don’t read too much to into the teams. O’Brien wanted George to play on the blue team so that he could have an opportunity to play alongside Granger and Rush since that hasn’t happened much during camp.

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Here’s a few observations from the first week of camp.

–The power forward spot is Josh McRoberts’ to lose. He’s been the best player in camp so far, and O’Brien even said he’d probably play about 36 minutes a game if the season start.
McRoberts has gone from Mr. Irrelevant seven months ago to possibly being Mr. Starter.
McRoberts is better playing with the starting unit because all he has to worry about is providing his specialty, which is running the court, rebounding and passing.
The verdict is still out on Tyler Hansbrough because he’s still limited somewhat in practice.

–This may not be a big deal to some, but I found it interesting when Lance Stephenson walked by me on his way off the court Saturday and I casually asked how things are going for him.
“I’ve got to get better defensively,” he said right away. “I’m having a difficult time with off-the-ball defending.”
I was expecting him to say something like, “It’s going good. I’m glad to have a day off tomorrow.”
Nope.
He wanted to talk about his defense.
I give the young man credit for speaking up and talking about it unsolicited.

–It’s just one week, but this year’s team already has a different feel to it.
The players are focused and there’s not a lot of joking around on the sidelines like in past years. It also helps that there aren’t any injured players sitting out watching.
The scrimmages are pretty competitive (not counting what happened Saturday), which usually means things tend to get testy at times.
I was told the players spent time in the locker room after practice Saturday talking about how to play the different defenses. This was done with no coaches around.
I can’t recall the last time that the players took it amongst themselves to have a discussion like that, especially considering they were talking defense.
That’s a sign of good team chemistry.
We’ll see if that translates into more victories this season.

–Darren Collison is still learning to play without the ball as much. He should be fine once it’s all said and done.
He’s so quick with the ball and he likes getting after it defensively.
Fans will definitely embrace how he plays.

–T.J. Ford has the inside track to be Collison’s backup.
He deserves it because he’s gotten off to a good start in camp.
I know a lot of you have said you’d prefer Stephenson or A.J. Price to backup Collison, but Ford (if he’s not traded) is the best option at the moment.
Stephenson – as he acknowledged – is not a good defender. Ask anybody in the organization and they’ll tell you the same thing. I’ll say this, though, Stephenson definitely knows how to get buckets on the offensive end. I’ve seen some team officials just shake their head after watching Stephenson break somebody down off the dribble.
Price is still working his way back from knee surgery.

twitter.com/MikeWellsNBA

The team discussing defense without the coaches even being there excites me more then anything. This team is going to be fun to watch this year and will win due to the players' dedication this year to winning and defense.

Sookie

10-03-2010, 01:49 AM

A few interesting things..

no crap Lance has trouble guarding Darren. The speed factor is just so huge. He's slow footed, too slow footed for PGs. However, I noticed that he plays SG some in Practice too. He's also not a PG, but I'm not gonna argue this anymore, it'll be figured out soon enough.

Good to get a Tyler mention, he's restricted..okay. Also, good for Josh. I know it's just the first week of camp, but good for him.

I noticed that Dahntay and Solo aren't even mentioned, and TJ's bit comes with a "if not traded"

and speaking of. I'm glad there seems to be a definite "Collison's starting" vibe coming from O'brien. (I still wouldn't be shocked if TJ starts...or even worse finishes games early on in the season) But I do think, so long as AJ is working himself back, obviously Ford has to play. I don't think we want to send AJ out there if he's still working himself back, which would probably force Collison to play quite a bit. Still, I'd like to trade TJ.

Infinite MAN_force

10-03-2010, 08:10 PM

I'm really stoked for pre-season to start. This is going to be a long week.

Pacers4Life

10-03-2010, 10:36 PM

Nice to have an over-view of the whole week rather than our own we make with 15 mins of total footage (its really* fun though).

Im tellin you, McRob at the 4 will work. No reason it shouldn't. He'll give it 110%, hes gonna board and hes gonna play D... Or he'll find Jims bad side again, guaranteed.

I cant disagree with the "team" meeting with the defense, thats epic. Lately I've been watching the clips of camp and looking a lot to see the players NOT playing, how they react to plays. Lots of encouragement and excitement.. as there should be. Good to see regardless

* see edit.

cdash

10-03-2010, 11:15 PM

I feel good about this team. I think it is going to be a much more enjoyable season to watch.

MyFavMartin

10-03-2010, 11:43 PM

I would hope that that blue team lineup should take the other lineup to the woodshed.

OakMoses

10-04-2010, 11:37 AM

I'm reading a lot in between the lines here, so I could be totally off-base.

I think Danny learned something this summer playing with Team USA that most of us never even thought about: How to be a leader.

The evidence:

-I think it was O'Brien who said this, but Danny was asked what he learned from his Team USA experience this summer and his first response is "Chauncey Billups is a great leader."

-We have quotes from Lance and Brandon saying that Danny called them and "gave them an earful" shortly after their mishaps this summer.

-We've got team outings to hamburger joints. This may be totally tangential.

-We've got players staying after to discuss defense with no coaches.

We're getting some player leadership with this group of guys that we've not seen before. It may or may not be coming from Danny, but it's coming from somewhere. And it's good.

I love that Lance is talking about defense, and I agree with Wells about his scoring ability. I very honestly believe that Lance could average 17-18 ppg and 4-5 asts on a really bad team if you gave him 30+ minutes. (Sidenote: That's why Tyreke Evans should not have won ROY last year.)

MLB007

10-04-2010, 11:46 AM

Given that it's a tiny amount of the total played, I think TJ has looked pretty good.
Solo has shown up as well, looks like he realizes that someone with a contract isn't going to be here after all.